


Lights, Camera

by Lookingkindofdumb



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU
Genre: Alfred is the best, Gen, Humor, So does Clark, secret identity reveal...fail, the robins love to give Batman shit, where Bruce trolls the press (and Gotham) without even lying, who is really beneath the cowl?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-23
Updated: 2017-01-23
Packaged: 2018-09-19 10:34:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9436403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lookingkindofdumb/pseuds/Lookingkindofdumb
Summary: After all, who would believe that Bruce Wayne was the Batman?





	

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer.
> 
> Just something silly whipped up when I realised that Bruce's identity is actually revealed a few times and he just bluffs his way out of it. Bruce Wayne as Batman? _Impossible._

Batman unmasked! Reads the newspaper title that takes up half the page. Bruce avoids looking at the picture; he wants a few more seconds of blissful ignorance before he has to face the world.

"Well, that sounds sensational; I can't wait to find out who is behind the cowl." Alfred remarks dryly, setting down the paper on the breakfast table. Bruce grimaces, reaching up to rub the bridge of his nose. He winces, ouch.

"I did tell you to keep the bandages on a little longer." Alfred rebukes with a sniff while Bruce pretends his face doesn't sting like the worst of sunburns. He has a high pain tolerance, that doesn't mean he doesn't find it extremely _irritating_.

"It's fine." He mutters, gripping his coffee like it will save him. The bitter brew is mercilessly cold to his fate.

"It would have been warm if you had come down to breakfast at a sensible hour." Alfred says, because he is a cruel, cruel, hot coffee withholding person. Evidently his expression is so woeful that Tim takes pity on him and passes over his own coffee.

It's hot, which is about the only good aspect of the creamy overly sweet concoction. Bruce resists the urge to spit it out and passes the cup back. Tim is visibly biting back a grin; Bruce wonders why he ever took in any of the brats.

"Now, if you manage to eat your breakfast I might be able to rustle up some more coffee." Alfred offers, like the benevolent dictator of Wayne Manor that he is. Bruce doesn't feel like eating but the lure of coffee is too strong. He places a slice of toast on his plate. Alfred clears his throat pointedly and Bruce adds another slice to his plate with ill grace.

He hates mornings.

"The pictures aren't that bad." Tim says bracingly, rifling through the newspaper. His lips are twitching, so Bruce doesn't trust a word he says.

"Really." He says flatly, brightening when the fresh, piping hot coffee appears. Maybe mornings aren't a dead loss after all.

"MmHmm." Tim hums in agreement. He turns the page. A snort escapes his mouth. Bruce wonders if he can ban people in the house from talking before twelve. It would certainly get rid a lot of his impending headaches. The clock chimes one and Bruce disregards the thought.

"I mean, you almost make Bruce Wayne look respectable. But I think that's mainly the costume, it adds an air of solemnity." Tim comments, angelically.

"I don't know why I ever considered you the kind one." Bruce mutters. Tim smiles beatifically.

"It is Robin's job to give Batman shit." Tim says, as though imparting the secrets of life.

"I'm fairly sure that that is not what Dick said." Bruce says doubtfully. He wouldn't put it past him.

"I'm paraphrasing." Tim says loftily. "Anyway, I think it was Jason who made that rule up."

"You have rules?" Bruce narrows his eyes. Tim looks at him with unflattering surprise.

"Of course we have rules. You aren't the easiest person to live with, B, let alone work with."

Bruce thinks he should be insulted but from Alfred's expression he agrees with Tim and Bruce hates fighting battles he isn't going to win.

"I don't make you clean your rooms." He mutters, maybe slightly resentful. Tim raises an eyebrow.

"You don't." Tim acknowledges without sounding like he is agreeing at all.

"Would you like to see the damage report, Master Bruce?" Alfred asks, holding out another newspaper. Bruce sighs, unable to put it off any longer.

The most aggravating part of this whole thing to Bruce, was that it was through a series of accidents that he had ever been unmasked at all. It wasn't some diabolical scheme, wasn't an elaborate plot. Just accidents all occurring at the worst possible time in quick succession.

If Bruce believed in luck he would have said that smashing all those mirrors had finally caught up with him. Although, he thinks that he should get a pass on the funhouse mirrors, those things are creepy.

(Dick had already rung up over the phone just to laugh at him. Clearly Nightwing didn't have nearly enough to do.)

If the acid hadn't eaten through his mask he wouldn't have removed it. 

But that's getting ahead of himself. 

One lucky hit, one face full of acid that was lying on the ground - Bruce had dodged it earlier in the scuffle, one room full of Gotham's wealthy and the accompanying press, one mild paralytic administrated a few hours before that made his reactions sluggish and clumsy.

Photos and gossip that could never be taken back.

There were pictures of Bruce's face in the goddamn suit circulating. 

Bruce sighs, there isn't enough coffee in the world.

 

#

 

"Mister Wayne, care to explain the incriminating pictures now circulating the whole of Gotham?" The reporter is a new one, Bruce hasn't been interviewed by her before, and she holds out the microphone far too close to his face.

"Incriminating photos?" Bruce says, making his voice airy and confused. "But I thought they used those things," he makes a vague gesture with his hands, "to cover up the, uh, more naked parts. You know, where they make the picture all fuzzy at the interesting bits."

She gapes at him for a moment.

"I'm talking about the photos of you in the batsuit." She clarifies.

"Photos of me in a what? I will cop to the bunny ears but anything else and I'm afraid you've lost me." Bruce blinks guilelessly. 

" _These_ pictures, Mr Wayne." She says, pushing a newspaper in front of his face and tapping one with particular emphasis. Bruce squints at it.

"That's a handsome fellow there, nice bone structure." Bruce smiles winningly.

"You're avoiding the question." She points out.

"Sorry, what question? I got a little distracted, that costume is rather tight, isn't it?"

"You'd know." She says promptly. Bruce frowns and examines the picture more closely.

"Is that me? That explains the wetsuit; I did wonder where it came from. The boots puzzled me too, I found them in the fish bowl." Bruce confides, leaning in close. "I just thought I'd brought someone home who liked a little bit of fancy dress when playing games." He waggles his eyebrows so as to make clear what kinds of recreational behaviour he is alluding to.

"You don't remember the events of last night?" She enquires, beginning to look rather frustrated. It is an expression Bruce sees rather a lot of when he plays Bruce Wayne. 

"I had one too many drinks last night; I think the fourteenth purple nurple was a mistake. The party was great though, I really thought she was Wonder Woman." Bruce admits, wide eyed. "Only it turned out her whip didn't glow. Or make people more truthful."

"So, you're saying you were at a costume party last night."

"Oh, probably." Bruce shrugs.

"How did you end up at the local fundraiser for penguins then? You definitely didn't fit the dress code." She asks, looking a little bored now. 

"Ah, well, I got an invite?" Bruce asks more than says. "And I forgot about it. It seemed rather rude having not said that I wasn't coming, so I went to apologise and donate. I think. It all gets a little blurry after that." Bruce frowns. "I really thought she was Wonder Woman." He says a little mournfully. "I think she slipped me her number though." He brightens up.

"Bruce Wayne, are you Batman?" She asks, a little like it is hurting her inside to voice something so ridiculous. 

"Well, I can safely say I've never been asked that before." Bruce smarmily. "Do you want me to be Batman? I'm very good at role play." He says, earnest. She doesn't disguise the roll of her eyes and the camera turns away from him.

Bruce enters Wayne Enterprises and adjusts his sunglasses. They pinch his nose which still aches, along with all of his face. But they keep up the illusion that he is hung over. Bruce Wayne only ever wears sunglasses when hung over. (Or when Batman is trying to hide a black eye, but to the press it is one and the same.)

 

#

 

"Apparently you do a good Batman impression." 

"I think you need to stop listening to gossip. Oh, wait." Bruce widens his eyes.

"Ha ha. I'll have you know I write about the news, not the celebrity columns. I deal with facts." Clark responds without rancour.

Bruce lets his silence hang with the appropriate scepticism.

"The Flash is impressed." Clark comments, taking the higher road and ignoring him.

"It doesn't take much to impress him." Bruce mutters, looking over the newspaper articles and cross referencing them to the list he has of recent warehouse fires, the unreported and reported ones. 

"That is mean." Clark announces. "He said 'only the Batman could be publicly unmasked and still keep his secret identity'."

Bruce ignores him.

"You should be nice to me." Clark says, out of the blue.

"Why." 

"Because I've got the coffee." 

"No, you don't." Bruce observes. Clark blurs. Suddenly the scent of coffee fills the cave.

"Now I do." Clark offers one of the cups; it has a saucer on top of it to prevent any of the liquid spilling while Clark broke speed records for race cars with his own two feet.

"That wears down the floorboards terribly. Alfred won't be pleased." Bruce says, not really bothered.

"I'll apologise." Clark promises. Bruce narrows his eyes, Clark never apologises for the shit like this he pulls. He's a lying liar who lies but nobody believes Bruce when he tells them this. It must be the costume, maybe wearing the colours of the American flag make people ignore the obvious.

"Seriously, though, you haven't had any trouble? People actually swallowed the costume party line?" Clark asks, polluting his coffee with cream and sugar. Bruce now knows who is to blame for Tim's atrocious habits. There will be recompense. 

"Only a few people seem to take it seriously. The majority think it was a drunken faux pas."

"That's good." 

"It helps that over the next few days Batman made very public appearances while Bruce Wayne was very much in the public eye." Bruce adds. Dick hates pretending to be him but it was necessary after those photos.

"I think I glimpsed those photos, there are things I can no longer unsee." Clark frowns. They sip their coffee in silence. Bruce matches a few more stories up to the incidents; there is definitely something to check out at the west docks. Even for Gotham that is too many fires in too short a time.

"It kind of makes you think, though." Clark says. Bruce raises an eyebrow. "I do use my head for more than just hitting things you know." Clark frowns lightly. Bruce makes his disbelief clear. Clark swats at him.

"I mean, you revealed yourself to the public and still no one beliefs the proof right in front of their own eyes."

"It is hardly the first time I've _revealed_ myself in front of the press." Bruce says because he actually cannot stop it from coming out of his mouth. Clark snorts then looks a little ashamed at himself.

"If you didn't know me, would you swallow it?" Bruce asks, taking the conversation back to more serious waters. Clark sighs.

"I guess not." He admits looking put out. "You are a very good liar." He adds quietly. It isn't a compliment. Bruce takes it as one, it has served him well.

"The stage is missing an actor."

"Don't be an idiot." Bruce briefly entertains the thought before pushing it away. He cannot imagine much worse.

"Yeah, I can't really see you taking to it either. You'd make everyone cry with one scathing look denouncing their intelligence and I mean, the _spotlight_. You're allergic to light, right?"

"For the last time, I am not a vampire." Bruce sighs. He will get the Green Lantern back for that one day. Shoving garlic into his cubicle and making comical faces every time Bruce ate garlic bread (a lot because Hal ordered the food on purpose) was growing old.

Clark finishes his coffee and moves over to help Bruce with his files. Bruce glares at him when he steals half the stack. Clark holds his hands out in surrender. Bruce relents and passes over a couple of the files.

"Look out for mentions of the West Dock." He says, Clark has good eyes when he focuses.


End file.
